Royal Assassin. Робин Хобб
knuckle. Then my reluctant gaze was drawn up and my vision taken afar.
My pointing hand indicated the quiet harbour. I struggled to sit up taller, to see more. The darkened town spread out before me like a patchwork of houses and roads. Fog lay in hollows and was thick upon the bay. Weather change coming, I thought to myself. Something stirred in the air that chilled me, cooling the old sweat on my skin so that I shivered. Despite the blackness of the night and the fog, I had no difficulty in seeing everything perfectly. Skill-watching I told myself, and then wondered. I could not Skill, not predictably, not usefully.
But as I watched, two ships broke out of the mists and emerged into the sleeping harbour. I forgot what I could or could not do. They were sleek and trim, those ships, and though they were black under the moonlight, I knew their keels were red. Red Ship Raiders from the Outislands. The ships moved like knives through the wavelets, cutting their way clear of the fog, slicing into the protected water of the harbour like a thin blade slicing into a pig’s belly. The oars moved silently, in perfect unison, oarlocks muffled with rags. They came alongside the docks as boldly as honest merchants come to trade. From the first boat, a sailor leaped lightly, carrying a line to make fast to a piling. An oarsman fended her off the dock until the aft line was thrown and made fast as well. All so calmly, so blatantly. The second ship was following their example. The dreaded Red Ships had come into town, bold as gulls, and tied up at their victims’ home dock.
No sentry cried out. No watchman blew a horn, or threw a torch onto a waiting heap of pitchpine to kindle a signal fire. I looked for them, and instantly found them. Heads on chests, they were idling at their posts. Good woollen homespun had gone from grey to red sopping up the blood of their slit throats. Their killers had come quietly, overland, sure of each sentry post, to silence every watcher. No one would warn the sleeping town.
There had not been that many sentries. There was not much to this little town, scarce enough to deserve a dot on the map. The town had counted on the humbleness of its possessions to shelter it from raids such as this. Good wool they grew there, and they spun a fine yarn, it was true. They harvested and smoked the salmon that came right up their river, and the apples here were tiny but sweet, and they made a good wine. There was a fine clam beach to the west of town. These were the riches of Siltbay, and if they were not great, they were enough to make life treasured by those who lived here. Surely, though, they were not worth coming after with a torch and a blade. What sane man would think a keg of apple wine or a rack of smoked salmon worth a raider’s time?
But these were Red Ships, and they did not come to raid for wealth or treasures. They were not after prize breeding cattle or even women for wives or boys for galley slaves. The wool-fat sheep would be mutilated and slaughtered, the smoked salmon trampled underfoot, the warehouses of fleeces and wines torched. They would take hostages, yes, but only to Forge them. The Forge magic would leave them less than human, bereft of all emotions and any but the most basic thoughts. The Raiders would not keep these hostages, but would abandon them here, to work their debilitating anguish upon those who had loved them and called them kin. Stripped of every human sensitivity, Forged ones would scour their homeland as pitilessly as wolverines. This setting of our own kin to prey upon us as Forged ones was the Outislanders’ cruellest weapon. This I already knew as I watched. I had seen the aftermath of other raids.
I watched the tide of death rise to inundate the little town. The Outislander pirates leaped from the ship to the docks and flowed up into the village. They trickled silently up the streets in bands of twos and threes, as deadly as poison unfurling in wine. Some few paused to search the other vessels tied to the dock. Most of the boats were small open dories, but there were two larger fishing vessels and one trader. Their crews met swift death. Their frantic struggles were as pathetic as fowl flapping and squawking when a weasel gets into the chicken house. They called out to me with voices full of blood. The thick fog gulped their cries greedily. It made the death of a sailor no more than the keening of a sea bird. Afterwards, the boats were torched, carelessly, with no thought to their value as spoils. These raiders took no real booty. Perhaps a handful of coins if easily found, or a necklace from the body of one they had raped and killed, but little more than that.
I could do nothing except watch. I coughed heavily, then found a breath to speak. ‘If only I could understand them,’ I said to the Fool. ‘If only I knew what they wanted. There is no sense to these Red Ships. How can we fight those who war for a reason they will not divulge? But if I could understand them …’
The Fool pursed his pale lips and considered. ‘They partake of the madness of he who drives them. They can only be understood if you share that madness. I myself have no wish to understand them. Understanding them will not stop them.’
‘No.’ I did not want to watch the village. I had seen this nightmare too often. But only a heartless man could have turned away as if it were a poorly-staged puppet show. The least I could do for my people was to watch them die. It also was the most I could do for them. I was sick and a cripple, an old man far away. No more could be expected from me. So I watched.
I watched the little town awaken from soft sleep to the rough grip of a strange hand on the throat or breast, to a knife over a cradle, or the sudden cry of a child dragged from sleep. Lights began to flicker and glow throughout the village; some were candles kindled on hearing a neighbour’s outcry; others were torches or burning houses. Although the Red Ships had terrorized the Six Duchies for over a year, for these folk it became completely real tonight. They had thought they were prepared. They had heard the horror stories, and resolved never to let it happen to them. But still the houses burned and the screams rose to the night sky as if borne on the smoke.
‘Speak, Fool,’ I commanded hoarsely. ‘Remember forward for me. What do they say about Siltbay? A raid on Siltbay, in winter.’
He took a shuddering breath. ‘It is not easy, nor clear,’ he hesitated. ‘All wavers, all is change still. Too much is in flux, your majesty. The future spills out in all directions there.’
‘Speak any you can see,’ I commanded.
‘They made a song about this town,’ the Fool observed hollowly. He gripped my shoulder still; through my nightshirt, the clutch of his long, strong fingers was cold. A trembling passed between us and I felt how he laboured to continue standing beside me. ‘When it is sung in a tavern, with the refrain hammered out to the beat of ale mugs upon a table, none of this seems so bad. One can imagine the brave stand these folks made, going down fighting rather than surrendering. Not one, not one single person, was taken alive and Forged. Not one.’ The Fool paused. A hysterical note mingled with the levity he forced into his voice. ‘Of course, when you’re drinking and singing, you don’t see the blood. Or smell the burning flesh. Or hear the screams. But that’s understandable. Have you ever tried to find a rhyme for “dismembered child”? Someone once tried “remembered wild” but the verse still didn’t quite scan.’ There was no merriment in his banter. His bitter jests could shield neither him nor me. He fell silent once more, my prisoner doomed to share his painful knowledge with me.
I witnessed in silence. No verse would tell of a parent pushing a poison pellet into a child’s mouth to keep him from the Raiders. No one could sing of children crying out with the cramps of the swift, harsh poison, or the women who were raped as they lay dying. No rhyme nor melody could bear the weight of telling of archers whose truest arrows slew captured kinfolk before they could be dragged away. I peered into the interior of a burning house. Through the flames, I watched a ten-year-old boy bare his throat for the slash of his mother’s knife. He held the body of his baby sister, strangled already, for the Red Ships had come, and no loving brother would give her to either the Raiders or the voracious flames. I saw the mother’s eyes as she lifted her children’s bodies and carried them into the flames with her. Such things are better not remembered. But I was not spared the knowledge. It was my duty to know these things, and to recall them.
Not all died. Some fled into the surrounding fields and forests. I saw one young man take four children under the docks with him, to cling in the chill water to the barnacled pilings until the raiders left. Others tried to flee and were slain as they ran. I saw a woman in a nightgown slip from a house. Flames were already running up the side of the building. She carried one child in her arms and another